


mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Almost Drowning, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dreams, Gen, Isobel Evans - Freeform, Max Evans - Freeform, Michael Guerin Has Two Alien Moms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 04:49:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21130922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: Michael dreams of Antar.





	mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from this old nursery rhyme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush,_Little_Baby
> 
> this fic is not for redistribution without my express permission.

Three towers on top of the castle,  
Three bright stars that light up the sky,  
Three ships coming into the harbor,  
Three baby birds that are learning to fly.

Three planets all spinning in circles,  
Three times that I kiss you goodnight.  
Three times that I’ll kiss you good morning,  
Three turns you make and the heading is right.

Three times I tell you I love you,  
Three gifts I give you to help you to see.  
Follow this map and I’ll be there waiting,  
Three times if you promise you’ll come home to me.  
\--_Antarian folk song for loved ones leaving on a long journey_  


* * *

  1. Michael dreams like this:

There is a woman, a very tall woman, and he doesn’t want to look at her face, so he stares at her knees instead. The woman gets angry at him for not listening, but she doesn’t shout; she just kneels on the shimmering purple floor and puts her strong hands on his shoulders. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying.

“You’re brave, you’re a brave boy,” the woman says, but he isn’t brave, because he still can’t look at the woman, apart from her eyes there’s just a blurry smear where her face should be, and if he was brave he would squint his eyes at it and try and see right through, but he won’t, because he’s not brave. He doesn’t even _want _to be.

“Be good, be good for your mother,” the woman says, but he isn’t good, because if he was good the woman wouldn’t be sending him away; if he was good, she wouldn’t be crying again, because he would make it all better. His mother likes to tell him he’s good, likes to tell him he does, but if that was true then everyone wouldn’t be sad, and they wouldn’t be leaving, and they wouldn’t be leaving the woman behind.

“I’ll see you, I’ll see you when this is all over,” the woman says, but someone is pulling him away, and he turns his head to look at the woman until she’s gone and his neck hurts, and his eyes hurt too, because the room they take him to is too bright. The pod rooms always are, and he hates it, and he tells his mother so, and she smiles and pulls him into her chest and kisses his forehead and says:

“Just close your eyes, baby, you can take a nice long nap soon, and when you wake up it’ll be better, we’ll be in a better place—”

Except it won’t be better, because the woman won’t be there, and he _knows _his mother knows that too, because her tears are dropping into his hair and he can feel her sadness in how tightly she’s holding him. He wants to tell her lying is bad, because that’s what the woman tells him when he says he didn’t push Zan into the mirror pool again, and it makes his mother smile when he repeats the things the woman says. He wants to say he’s not a baby, just tired and confused and sad, but she’s already crying and he doesn’t want to make it worse.

“We’re going on a long, long trip, and when you wake up it will all be better,” his mother says again.

Then she kisses his forehead and calls him _her wrath_ and puts her hand against the nearest pod.

* * *

When he wakes up he’s face to face with the stars, cold sweat soaking through his sleeping bag. He can’t remember a single second of the dream, but he knows that he is angry.

* * *

  1. Michael dreams like this:

“Vilandra, give it _back!_”

Zan stamps his foot. His fists are clenched at his sides; his face is bright red. He, Michael, though that isn’t his name yet, hasn’t yet been given to him ‘cause M was the next letter of the alphabet—he rolls his knuckles on the cool marble steps where he’s sitting and flicks his eyes back and forth. Landra seems like she’s getting taller every day but Zan hasn’t grown that much, even though they’re twins. It’s her new favorite thing to tease her brother about. Michael tells Zan that it’s okay—he’s still taller than Michael, at least—but Zan stomped his foot then too and said it wasn’t the _same. _

Landra takes advantage of her new height now, holding Zan’s new book over her head so he can’t reach it. “Ask me nicer,” she taunts, and Zan’s face goes bright red with anger.

They do this a lot. Michael’s mom laughs and says it’s just because they’re siblings, and they’ll grow out of it, then she tells him a story about some of the things she used to do to her brothers when they were Zan and Vilandra’s age. Michael guesses it’s okay if it’s normal, but he still doesn’t know what to do in the thick of it. If he’s supposed to protect them, how does he go about protecting them from each other? And they always end up fighting on days like today—_nice _days, where they’ve been let out early from classes, and they’re allowed to play in the courtyard with the mirror pool in it with only one guard and Michael, so it’s really easy to get away with stuff. Michael would rather be helping them plan to steal desserts from the kitchen than listening to them yell at each other again.

“If you don’t give it back, you’ll never see this again,” Zan says, and he holds something up that sparkles and makes Vilandra shriek with fury.

“You _took _Nana’s necklace?” She screams, bursting into noisy tears—but nowhere near as inconsolable as she’d been the other day when she noticed the necklace was missing. Michael spent three whole days helping her look for it, but neither of them even bothered checking Zan’s room. Why would he do this? It was a gift, it was Vilandra’s gift, their grandmother gave Zan a gift of his own, so why’d he take this one? Michael doesn’t understand, and he’s mad too, but he doesn’t want to get in between the twins while they’re yelling at each other.

Then, still howling, Vilandra throws Zan’s book on the ground so hard that Michael can hear the crack of the spine from where he’s sitting. Plus the ground is muddy from the recent rain, and the pages crumple up from the dirt and the wet, and it’s definitely ruined now. All three of them gape at it for a second, like they have no idea what could have happened. Then Zan turns on his heel and throws, as hard as he can, their Nana’s necklace, which twinkles in the bright sunlight as arcs up high and then falls with a _plop _into the center of the pool.

For a moment, a shocked silence falls over the courtyard. Even the guard, who had been lazing in the shade of one of the pillars across the yard, stops to stare, open-mouthed, at the rippling water.

Zan and Vilandra both start crying, then, and it’s too much, Michael is supposed to _protect _them, that’s what he’s made for, and that’s what everyone says. So he kicks off his shoes and runs down the steps, past the twins, and throws himself into the pool.

The water is so clear the necklace is easy to see on the smooth bottom. He didn’t realize, though, he didn’t know, how _deep _it is, how hard he needs to kick to propel himself down and down, how heavy clothes get when they’re soaked with water, how much it hurts to hold your breath until your lungs feel like they could burst. He closes his hand around the pendant and clutches it to his chest and kicks up again, but then a cough shakes him, forces his mouth open, forces water to flood in and choke him, drown him, make him thrash away from it but it’s everywhere, it’s all around him, and—

A strong arm snatches him around the waist. Before he even passes out for real, his head is popping out of the water, but he still can’t _breathe, _gasping and coughing and gaping, until the guard plops him on the edge of the pool and thumps him on the back until all the water’s come back up out of his stomach and lungs.

The second he takes a good, big breath, Zan and Vilandra are on top of him, fighting for who gets to hug more of him, shouting _over _instead of _at _each other this time, and Michael’s too out of it to tell for real what they’re saying. He takes Vilandra’s hand and puts the necklace into it; she makes a fist, and punches him in the shoulder.

“I’ll go with you to pick out another book tomorrow—” Michael blubbers at Zan, and then Zan is punching him too, and then they’re hugging again.

Michael hopes his mother won’t be mad about his wet clothes.

She isn’t.

* * *

When he wakes up the first thing he sees is the high ceiling of Max’s sitting room, and a headache pounds sickly behind his eyes. He can’t remember a single second of the dream, but in the waking world Max is dead and Isobel has left, and the (_human) _heart is divided into left and right sides, and Michael has lost them both.

* * *

  1. Michael dreams like this:

His mother is singing him a lullaby, but he isn’t sleepy. This is the first time they’ve gone so far out of the city, to where the stars are bright enough to name. He wishes Zan and Vilandra were here, but they’re not allowed to come this far out because it’s “dangerous.” But they don’t care as much about the stars as Michael does anyway, so he guesses it’s okay. Zan gave him a really nice book about star travel for his birthday, and Vilandra bought him a compass, and he has both hugged to his chest as he watches a ship come in low and all lit up, heading for the Royal Port.

“Is Zan and Vilandra’s mom on that one?” He asks when the song finishes and the ship is just disappearing toward the horizon.

His mother strokes his hair off his forehead and is quiet for a moment. “No, sweetheart. That’s probably their cousin come back from Dedameia. The Queen has a lot of important duties far away right now.”

“They really miss her.” The ship has passed them, Michael’s eyes fully re-adjusted to the dark sky, and he blinks in time with the twinkling of the brightest star he can see. When he’s back in the light, he’ll read Zan’s book and figure out which one it is, and how he might go about seeing it someday. “I’d really miss you, if you were gone that often.”

He misses his other mom too, when she has to leave for work, but he’s kind of used to it now, and as long as she calls every night like she promises, it’s not so bad.

“I’d miss you too, baby,” she croons, “But it would be okay. Do you know why?”

“Because I could stay with Zan and Vilandra, and you’d be back before I knew it?”

“That’s a good answer, but it’s not the only one.”

“Because you’d call me, like mama does?”

“I would, baby, I would. Do you have one more answer for me?”

He snuggles back into her and thinks for a second. “Because you’ll always love me?”

She doesn’t answer that one with words; she bends down and kisses the top of his head, and he smiles, because he knows that means she’s happy.

Then she says, “There you go. Now you know it will be okay. Because you see—” She takes Michael’s hand in hers and points their fingers together, tracing three lines in the night sky, connecting the three brightest stars together. “Those stars are called the Triad, and when our explorers see them in the sky and on their sensors, they know they’re almost home. So no matter how far away we may go, if we make each other three promises, we’ll always find each other again. That’s the way it works.”

“That’s the way it works,” Michael repeats, and he smiles, hugging the book and the compass again. He’ll have to think of some really good promises to make with Zan and Vilandra next time he sees them, in case they have to go with their mom on her next trip like the advisors are always muttering about behind closed doors.

His mom starts humming the lullaby again, and he _tells _her he isn’t sleepy, but she just laughs and says she just likes to sing, is all, especially when she’s with him.

* * *

And when Michael wakes, he doesn’t remember a single thing.

**Author's Note:**

> im very SAD about BABY ALIENS
> 
> discord @ haloud  
tumblr @ cosmicsolipsism


End file.
